If you like your TV crime dramas with complications and the rare out-of-left-field plot twist, these two episodes might fill the bill. One is yet another variation on the “caper” trope, while the other involves the venerable locked room murder theme.

A bank manager closes the vault and activates all the security systems; sixty-three hours later, when it’s opened, the floor is littered with safety deposit boxes, some of them having been broken open — but the rest of them and even the stacks of money in the vault lie untouched.

Everything indicates that a handful of thieves tunneled up through the vault of the floor, selectively plundered the richest deposit boxes, and made a subterranean getaway, with a helicopter waiting to take them out of the country. Every bit of forensic evidence (including geological analysis of the sand at the crime scene and aboard the abandoned chopper) points to that inescapable conclusion.

Only that’s not how it went down — nowhere near it — and, although it takes him a while, eventually Ironside figures out what really happened.

Kudos to writer Lansford (1922-2013) for coming up with a nicely gnarly caper scenario (even if he did borrow elements from Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League”), as well as to actor Raymond Burr (1917-93) for pulling off what was clearly a very difficult physical stunt.

An emotionally disturbed young man is found inside a locked room, a fatal gunshot to the head. He had been undergoing psychotherapy after his parents’ divorce, and his therapist can’t be sure he hasn’t missed some warning sign presaging the tragedy. In any event, there seems to be no compelling reason not to assume he committed suicide; a slip of paper with a quotation from A Tale of Two Cities next to the body can reasonably be considered a farewell note.

But when Ironside & Co. hit the scene, several seemingly unrelated bits of evidence turn up: the fact that the gun is found 8 feet 2 inches from the body; the merest trace of a not readily recognizable substance is detected on the door’s dead bolt lock; a large rubber band is found on the floor; $5,000 in hard cash is discovered inside a phonograph album sleeve in the kid’s music collection; the man hoping to marry the young man’s mother has a criminal record and is going under an assumed name; and the “suicide” note itself has a jagged edge that, to Ironside, seems out of character, contrary to the victim’s neat and orderly lifestyle.

Ultimately Ironside will uncover a plot to make a murder look like a suicide but with the real intention of making that suicide look like a murder.

There’s also some more borrowing from Conan Doyle here, in this case “The Problem of Thor Bridge.”

5 Responses to “Reviewed by Mike Tooney: Two IRONSIDE Episodes.”

IRONSIDE was very much a one man show, and Burr had to carry the absurd premise as well as the often complex plots. That he did so with ease and surprising physicality considering is yet another reminder just how good he was.

One thing does puzzle me, what was Mary Ure, Mrs. Robert Shaw, doing in an IRONSIDES episode?

To be honest though most of these episodes suffered from televisions tendency to telegraph the ending in order to keep the attention of viewers who would wander if the plot got too complex. It’s still a major problem on series television today, and still too often dumbs down even the best intents.

If memory serves, Robert Shaw had some sort of contract with Universal, in the wake of his Jaws stardom.
Swinging a guest gig for his wife on a popular American TV show may have been a perk of that contract (remember, Mary Ure was not very well-known away from the West End Stage; who would say no to national exposure on US TV – and Ironside was pretty popular around the world as well).

Meanwhile, I hope you’re all enjoying your MeTV, where you obviously saw these two Ironside episodes within days of each other.

My point (I think) was that few American viewers would have had any idea who Mary Ure was (unless they’d read about her in articles about Robert Shaw).
Besides, British actors have always been free of the snobbery that American “critics” seemed to feel they ought to have about working Yank TV “for the money”.
I lost track of how many interviews I’ve read with titled British actors who revealed their secret ambitions to come to the States and do a Western with John Wayne or some such. The Old Vic was apparently crawling with thespians who longed to ride a horse through Monument Valley.

About the time this episode appeared, NBC was coproducing a big special with Lew Grade of David Copperfield, and TV Guide sent their man in London to chat up the cast, which included every titled (or soon to be) British actor available.
Here’s a quote from one of them, Sir Ralph Richardson (italics mine):
” I don’t watch television, I merely appear on it. When I do watch, it’s usually the American shows – they’re the best, especially that fellow in the wheelchair.”

In the episode “All Honorable Men”, I was amazed at the physical stunt that Raymond Burr was able to do on camera. It was not the first time that he displayed an ability to do tough physical stunts on camera on “Ironside”. He also tried to escape captivity by pulling himself into a chair from the floor, falling out a window and crawling to a car, and trying to drive it using a stick to push the accelerator. Another episode had him crawling to the wheelchair after being pushed over by a friend and pulling himself up into a chair and into the wheelchair. I rediscovered “Ironside” last year after 40 years, and marvel at the acting ability of Raymond Burr.